Remembering how gentle and caring Ash had been with him the night before, Drew wasn’t about to let him withdraw into that cold, lonely shell again. Now that he’d seen the best of the man, he was ready to help him through his worst.
“Jordan, did you say anything to him to make him leave?” Everyone turned to him, Jordan’s face a picture of astonishment.
“Are you implying that I drove the man away? I did nothing of the sort. He walked away of his own free will.” Keith put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder, but he shook him off and advanced upon Drew. “Why do you care if he’s here, anyway? What happened to Shelly? Where’s your girlfriend?”
Everyone stared at Drew. “We broke up.”
Rachel’s mouth fell open. “Oh, Drew. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It was for the best. She was way too serious about the relationship. Much more into it than I was.”
Jordan made a sound of disgust. “I’m sure your buddy Ash was happy about the breakup.”
This was getting ridiculous. “What the fuck is your problem? You’ve had a stick up your ass about Ash since we first met him. So what if he made a pass at you years ago? Shit, man, let it go.”
Jordan persisted. “But don’t you see—”
“What I see is you bad-mouthing someone who’s never said a bad word about you. There’s no reason for you to hate him so much.”
“He’s a user, and you’re too nice a guy to see it. He screws people and then dumps them. That’s his MO.”
Worried, pissed off, and tired, Drew had enough. “Fuck you. I’m not that nice, and I can take care of myself. And as for Ash, you’ve never given him any slack, no matter how hard he’s worked at the clinic or tried to protect Stevie. You think you have the right to judge everyone and everything, and we should let you run our lives. Who the hell are you to treat me like some fucking child who doesn’t know any better? I decide who I take to my bed, not you, Jordan.” He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. “And for the record, Ash didn’t have to try too hard to screw me, ’cause I wanted him as much as he wanted me.”
From behind him, he recognized Mike’s “Oh shit.” Breathing hard, he pivoted on his heel. “You got a problem with that too, Mike?”
Mike put up his hands in front of him. “No way, man. I don’t care. This isn’t my beef.”
When he faced Jordan again, Keith had come over to his partner’s side to speak with him. For the first time it seemed Keith wouldn’t be able to calm his lover down as Jordan continued to bad-mouth Ash.
For some reason, Jordan thought he had the right to decide who Drew dated, screwed, and fell in love with. Drew had always known the man had an ego a mile wide, but this was ridiculous. “You know what, Jordan? I’m done. I thought as a friend you’d trust me to make the right decisions and stand by me.” They’d known each other since they were four years old, and this was the first test to their friendship. “I always thought I could count on you. Has that changed?”
Jordan couldn’t hold his gaze. “I trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”
Drew came right up into his friend’s face and locked eyes with him. He’d always known Jordan to be stubborn, arrogant, and high-handed but never deliberately mean.
“If you trust me, then you have to understand I know exactly what I’m doing here.”
Jordan’s mouth tightened. “It’s different. Snakes never let you know when they’re coming toward you. They slither around you, and before you know it, they’ve swallowed you whole. That’s what Ash Davis is. A snake. I’ve seen him in the courtroom. He’s got a way with words that’ll make you think black is white and up is down. Never mind silver-tongued, the man has a forked tongue.”
Remembering where Ash’s tongue had been on him last night, heat rose in Drew’s face and his cock twitched. Jesus. Who would’ve thought he’d be lusting after a man? Irritated with himself for getting distracted, Drew folded his arms across his chest and glared at Jordan. “It’s not the same, and you know it. You’re bordering on the irrational the way you feel about him.”
He spun away from Jordan. He was so angry with him; he had to leave before he did or said something he’d regret. Something that might irreparably damage their lifelong friendship, and he wasn’t ready for that to happen. Drew knew everything Jordan said to him was out of love and concern, but for so many years, people had managed his life and he’d gone along for the ride. His one act of rebellion, marrying Jackie, had turned disastrous, and that was all the fodder they needed to show him he wasn’t strong or smart enough to pick the right person for himself.
They didn’t understand how much he wanted to have someone care about him. Pathetic as it might be, he still felt like that little kid when his parents left for work and he’d be left home with Nana. He’d constantly needed reassurance that they’d be coming back home and that they hadn’t disappeared forever. Was it so wrong to want someone to hold him, someone to love? He’d always been that little boy lost.
After his parents died, he’d gone slightly crazy and thrown himself into the wildness of the college party scene. Anything to not be alone. Many a morning found him in a strange girl’s bed, with no idea how he’d gotten there. Nor did he remember the threesomes, occasionally waking up sandwiched in between two girls, or even once or twice tangled up with another girl and a guy. He’d always been so drunk that he couldn’t remember the sex at all. Total oblivion was what he’d been after, to wash the pain away.
That hadn’t lasted long, as fear for his health as well as his studies overcame his irrational behavior, and he’d settled down to being the studious bookworm he’d always been. He may have opened his mind to his studies, but he’d walled off his heart to living.
Now Ash had up and left him at a time when he needed someone to lean on. Though he’d been the most intimate that he’d ever been with a person, more so even than with any woman, Drew still didn’t fully understand Ash.
After last night, though, he assumed he’d have a chance to try.
Perhaps Jordan was right, and Ash was a user. He’d had to live his whole life by his wits and quick mind. But even as those thoughts tumbled around in his muddled brain, he remembered the quiet strength of Ash’s voice last night as he revealed his childhood to him. The self-loathing and pain etched on his face, the halting way he disclosed his story of debasement and cruelty, seared a path of not only pity across Drew’s heart but something fresh, unexposed to light before, as if he’d come out of the darkness from a long trip. Feelings he’d never before experienced and wasn’t yet ready to face.
When he glanced around the small room, everyone he cared about was there. They all looked at him with varying degrees of surprise, dismay, and shock to some extent. He knew they loved him, but as a brother and a friend. Right now he needed more than that. He needed to find out if the man he’d shared his secrets with and let possess his body was merely a figment of his imagination.
“I gotta go find out where Ash went to. I’ll come back after lunch and check on Nana.” Drew kissed his sister good-bye after promising to talk to her about everything.
